Of Crimson Waters
by lyrae.lights
Summary: Obito and Kakashi were not the only ones that attracted trouble. Enter one Akane Yamashita of Kirigakure, who has no idea what she signed up for when she accepts an infiltration mission to Konoha. In a kitchen sink, Rin Nohara is the love child of hair dye and scissors. Spy!Rin
1. Prologue

**Prologue**

 _Rin Nohara wakes to a world of white._

 _There is an IV drip attached to her arm. A heart monitor is beeping in the background. She can't remember anything, and her entire body aches. She breathes heavily, fumbling with the oxygen mask over her face. A nurse flutters in, beaming when she sees her awake._

 _"How are you feeling sweetie?" she asks checking her vitals. She hands a cup of water, and Rin drinks gratefully._

 _"Where-where are my parents?" Rin is wide-eyed and trembling, grasping at her bedsheets. She remembers traveling to Konoha with her family before the cavern roof was ripped off. Ripped off like her mother's head, and her father's dead body. Blood on swords and madmen grinning. The stench of death._

 _She curls herself into a ball, shaking. The nurse eases over her, and Rin clutches for support. Someone is screaming like an animal. She can't figure out who is screaming. When the nurse tightens her hold, she realizes it is her. She is screaming. She is the one sounding like a dying animal because she watched her parents killed. Her parents are dead. She's scared and everything hurts. Her skin burns and she feels the bandit pulling her hair and she can't stop screaming._

 _She feels a prick on her goes dark._

* * *

 _When she awakens, a ninja stands in front of her. Brown hair carelessly tousled and matching crinkled brown eyes. The Konoha headband hangs from his neck. His posture is relaxed and non-threatening._

 _"Hello Rin-chan," he raises his hands like approaching a wounded animal. For intents and purposes, she is a wounded animal._

 _She blushes and hides behind her bangs, embarrassed with her earlier outburst. He chuckles and sits next to her bed. The ninja begins asking questions, and Rin doesn't understand why he is here until he gets to her Konoha citizenship._

 _"Rin," his eyes uncharacteristically solemn, "your parents have filed for Konoha citizenship and were accepted. By our paperwork, you are still a Konoha citizen, but we want to know...do you want to stay here?"_

 _Rin doesn't know what she wants. She doesn't want to to go back home because home is where her family was. There is nothing to go back to._

 _Her eyes begin to tear up again, "I don't know," she asks timidly, "Where can I go? What's going to happen to me?"_

 _The chunnin pats her back soothingly._

 _"We have a foster-care system for civilians, you're too young to live on your own. If you want," he whispers conspiratorially, "you can even become a shinobi."_

 _"Really," she says in awe, "you'll let me be a shinobi?" Shinobi were cool. Konoha ninja were even cooler. The ninja-Saki-is really nice, and her nurse is really nice too. Konoha must be a good place since they sent ninja to rescue her._

 _He grins, "Yeah. It's going to be hard work…" He tilts his head to look at her, "but I think you can do it."_

 _She nods, pleased that something is going right._

 _They go over attending ninja academy. She doesn't have money for schooling and supplies, so Konoha will give her loans. She can pay it off later, Saki waves off the numbers. Ninjas earn a lot of money. She should be able to pay off quickly. Rin doesn't understand half the stuff she is signing, but she is seven and wants to be a ninja. Ninja are grown up._

 _Akane Yamashita, infiltration specialist, constructed Rin to be cannon fodder for the upcoming war. She is young, idealistic, and naïve. Rin Nohara wants to become a medic-nin to save lives-to defend and heal those unable to protect themselves. She believes in the Will of Fire, chants her nindo under her breath each time before battle. She will be as sweet as saccharine while blending into the scenery. Rin Nohara is the background cheerleader quietly supporting from the sidelines, unobtrusive but not quite useless. She is forgettable._

 _She is sweet as saccharine when sliding a knife in your ribs._

* * *

 **AN: Oh, Rin/Akane, what a sly one you are.**


	2. (Where Akane Yamashita Survives)

**AN: Thank you for reading! Introducing, Akane Yamashita, my OC.**

* * *

(In which Akane Yamashita survives).

It is a city forged in blood and water.

Imposing mountains under a heavy mist, a city near the sea, with murky waters all around. It is a city in gray and blue, built on the slopes of stone climbing from the edge of the ocean. Proud azure flags hang around the village. The village flushes out the weak through bloodshed while they promote the strongest. Kirigakure is one of the strongest villages in the world, if not the strongest.

Akane Yamashita was born with a sharp awareness. She is clanless with no visible kekkai genka and her appearance unremarkable except for two purple slashes across her cheeks. Overall, a sweet and friendly girl with a surprising fire affinity and an expected affinity for water. Her academy instructors pay no attention to her. She is talented but weak and too kind hearted—yielding too often in spars and unable to take a hit. She is an orphan and clanless. There is no familial support or extra jutsu practice to sharpen her. There is no will to become a shinobi. There is nothing but foolish naivety of a child.

Keeping her head down, she wants nothing to do with shinobi and murder. But the tradition/rule/excuse of dealing with orphans is shoving them into ninja academy. They use her as cannon fodder, a stepping stone for the more capable, practice for the more capable to trample on the weak and kill them.

Her first day, the back of her hands are shredded. The clan students laugh at her pitifulness, her inability to do katas. After academy is over, the students trail out onto the streets.

It is not the clan students, but the orphans that find her.

 _You make us look weak. Sickening. Weak. Gonna beat it out of you. Grow up._

When she flops to the side she tries to use medical ninjutsu to stitch up her wounds, she makes a mistake, being inexperienced, and passes out.

They say she is stupid. The academy instructors are not impressed with her.

 _Weak._

She tries harder in class, but the orphans and clan students still pick on her. Cornered enough times, beaten enough times, flinching enough times, a part of her dies. A part of her emotions die, and she feels dead. _Hollow._

One day, when some genin tries to push her around, she snaps.

When the rage subsides, Mitsu-sensei is next to her. The other academy instructors are surrounded an uneven lump of red. He grins at her, all sharp teeth and crazy eyes.

"You're learning. There's hope for you yet"

The genin is not dead - he's crippled. Can't fight, can't walk, can't be a ninja no more. He can still eat, talk, cry. For ninjas, it's fate worse then death. The nurses find him hanging in his room. _Good riddance_ they said. People leave her alone after that.

She keeps her head down.

* * *

Typically, graduation exam is harsh, but they are at war and cannot afford to kill too many with a Battle Royale for the entire class. Teams of ninja are in shortage, they are all supposed to all graduate. She continues to keep her head down and scores slightly below average because if she is too intelligent—too good, they will send her to the front lines.

And at night, if she practices her chakra control and simple medical ninjutsu in preparation to save herself, no one has to know.

Graduation rolls around, and she tries even harder to remain insignificant. On some bleak day the Mizukage declares that strength and purity is more important then numbers.

The rules change.

Their instructors take them to a cesspool, a forsaken island with enough pollution to kill them all. Some were smart enough to bring weapons wherever they go. Those with kekkai genaki would always have weapons. Technically, all of them have weapons. In the end, a body is a weapon, too. The instructors tell them that supplies are scattered across the place. Last one standing goes home. It's up to them to survive.

Mitsu-sensei bares his teeth and whispers into her ear:

 _Don't hesitate_.

When left alone, her classmates look at each other wearily. No one is moving. They are watching, waiting for something. Akane's heart quickens. She has no friends, she thinks, watching some students band together in groups. _She is alone_.

A boy from the Yuki clan, flicks a senbon at the dead last. Easy pickings.

Chaos.

* * *

She crouches in a muddy trench, the mist veiling her quietly, and one hand pressed across her stomach. A stench soaks the air, drawing the fear out of every thump of life across the grounds. Akane hides, desperately afraid and shivering quietly. Her pulse races like the fluttering of a dragonfly before the storm.

A snap of bone echoes and a girl—Nanami? screams—Akane clenches her teeth.

 _I don't want to die._

The sky seeps with evening and the cold falls like stone, in one swoop with no time to adjust. It digs into her, the numbness and she pushes her crimson fingers inside a jacket. She breathes quietly, eyes flickering across the mist.

Whistling pierces the air, a sharp kunai flies out. She twists from her spot and returns kunai. It hits someone behind her— _oh God how did I not see them_ —a returning kunai stabs her leg. There is an explosion of blood and dirt. Another exploding tag, there is a severed hand and another spray of crimson and the girl behind her screams, the blood and a boy's grotesque smile and ohgodliveliveliveliveIwanttoliveIWANTTOLIV—

Kunai pierces flesh, the boys' eyes widen in surprise. Everything else becomes a blur of red.

Night falls and the moonlight pours over the training ground. She leans back on a tree, sharpening her kunai. There is a numbness coursing through her veins even after throwing up. As she absent mindedly sharpens her kunai she wonders about her soul.

She spies one of her classmates, it's the Yuki boy. He's scanning the scenery, fingering his senbons in anticipation.

She thinks of Mitsu-sensei.

She doesn't hesitate.

* * *

When the academy instructors come to collect the survivor, they find Akane Yamashita alive with only a poisoned senbon in her leg.

At four, she becomes a genin.

Akane becomes her namesake-brilliant red. A little girl who sprayed brilliant red in the Village of Bloody Mist.

Her age is a boon.

She learns the arts of infiltration.

She wears herself out through identities and missions. Her first mission was as a merchant's daughter, stealing gold and priceless scrolls for a rival merchant cavern. She becomes a servant later, picking up tiblets of information before assassinating her supposed employer. At one point she becomes a maiko, a child apprentice geisha. Swathed in finery and overindulgence she enjoys the luxury for a few months.

Behind screened doors, she watches women moan and arch their back. She watches the way they become breathless. It's a curious thing, when they are touched in certain ways, they say certain things.

 _Please. More_. _Harder_.

Those are the ones that get paid more.

When letting down Kiichi-san's hair, the geisha talks freely. Kiichi thinks she is a child, and won't understand, making her words flow more freely. Sometimes, Akane thinks Kiichii knows she isn't just a child, and tries to teach her things. Geisha training translates into ninja training.

"Men like it," she explains, "when they think they are in control. They like to come up with ideas, be the one to solve problems."

Akane says nothing, merely brushes her long ebony hair.

"The key is to make them think it's their idea, to plant and nurture ideas in their head" she lights a pipe on fire, breathing the smoke in heavily.

Akira, the name Akane is currently going by, asks curiously, "How do you do it?"

Kiichi is silent.

"Look weak. _Vulnerable._ Men have different tastes, but all of their interests become piqued when a women is down."

Akane thinks long and hard about what the geisha says.

When her senpai returns from a particularly violent customer, she diligently tends to the welts and bruises. As she applies the salve, she enacts her plan.

"Kiichi-san," she begins hesitantly, voice trembling purposely, "will you teach me?"

The geisha laughs, shocking Akane.

"That was a pathetic attempt, brat"

With a strength Akane didn't know Kiichi had, the geisha pulled harshly on her hair. Eyes flinty, and mouth pressed into a hard line, Kiichi peered down questioning at Akane.

"Why?"

Akane could have lied, said she wanted to become like her senpai, become the best geisha ever. Instead, she tells the truth.

"To survive"

And that was how they began her training.

* * *

 **AN:** Thoughts, comments, concerns?


End file.
